A landlocked country which is covered largely by hills and mountains, Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world, where many people are isolated and without formal means of communication. Despite recent telecommunication sector reforms, rural areas have not been served.

In 1999, Uganda had achieved a national teledensity (fixed and mobile) of about one telephone per 100 inhabitants, slightly above the average for Sub- Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa). But with most phone lines concentrated in the Kampala area, rural teledensity was far lower. Indeed, only 380 of the 920 subcounties in Uganda were expected to have any kind of telephone service by 2001.

Access to telecommunications services has been extremely limited in the remote and sparsely populated areas of Mongolia. Several factors have conspired against achieving universal access on a purely commercial basis—the country’s vast and challenging geography, the nomadic lifestyle of the rural population, government ownership and incumbent control of the long-distance transmission network.